


your chance to even up the score

by void_fish



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22925584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_fish/pseuds/void_fish
Summary: Dylan fucking hates it when the Oilers are in town.
Relationships: Connor McDavid/Dylan Strome
Comments: 2
Kudos: 95





	your chance to even up the score

**Author's Note:**

> B wanted McStrome makeouts when they're broken up. This is... almost that fic.
> 
> This was supposed to be like 1/4 of the length it turned out to be, which is Fine.
> 
> Title from the Once OST.

Dylan fucking hates it when the Oilers are in town. 

He used to circle it on his calendar. _davo! :)_ in bright blue ink. Now it’s not circled, but he can’t seem to stop himself memorising the dates of Chicago-Edmonton games. 

“Maybe I’ll get hurt during the game and I won’t be able to go for dinner after,” he says to Brinksy, who’s stretched out on his living room floor, rolling his hamstring over a tennis ball. 

Brinksy gives him a look. Well. A Look, more accurately. It’s the one he reserves for Dylan being a quote, fucking idiot, end quote. 

“Just tell him you don’t want to get dinner with him,” he says, and then makes a pained sound as he changes the angle of the tennis ball. 

“I can’t do that,” Dylan mutters. He’s pretty sure Brinksy pretends not to hear, because he just keeps on talking over him. 

“I know you’re fuckin’, allergic to conflict or whatever, but you guys broke up three years ago. Why are you still pretending to be his friend?”

“I’m not pretending,” Dylan tries, and Brinksy straight up laughs at him. “I hate you,” he says. “Why are _we_ still friends?”

“No one else will put up with your crap,” Brinksy says, and sits up. “Go get me a beer. It’s the least you can do for forcing me to listen to this melodrama.”

“I’m asking for a trade back to Arizona,” Dylan informs him, but gets up and goes to the fridge anyway.

-

It wasn’t a break-up so much as it was— 

Well, it was a fucking disaster, is what it was.

There were a lot of excuses on both sides. Dylan said— a lot of things. They both got mean. 

They spent the summer not speaking, and then Dylan got traded, and moved in with Brinksy for a minute, and the next thing he knows, he goes out to the store because they forgot to buy sweet potatoes, and he gets back to find Connor in his stupid puffy winter coat on Brinksy’s fucking doorstep, hand raised to knock. 

He was wearing an Erie toque. That’s what Dylan remembers, out of everything. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I— wanted to say hi to Brinksy. I always come over when I’m in town. I— didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I live here,” Dylan says. “While I look for my own place.”

Connor swallows. He’s not wearing a scarf, and Dylan can see the line of his throat disappear into the zipper of his parka. 

“Are you supposed to be incognito in this shit?” he asks, shifting his grocery bag to the other arm.

Connor huffs out a small laugh and shrugs one shoulder up and down. It’s so uniquely him that it makes Dylan’s stomach ache a little. 

It’s too much. Dylan shoves the bag of sweet potatoes and peach rings (bought because Brinksy pretends he doesn’t have a sweet tooth but he’s a fucking liar) at Connor. “I can’t do this,” he says. “Tell Brinksy to text me when— you’re done.”

“You don’t have to go,” Connor says. 

The wind is vicious. It cuts through Dylan just as bad as the look on Connor’s face. 

“I know I don’t have to,” he says. “I want to. You’re not the only one that can choose to leave.”

-

Here’s the thing about break ups and Dylan: he’s supremely bad at them. 

Dylan— has a lot of feelings. He’s not always the best at expressing them properly, but at least he has them. 

Connor— 

Dylan didn’t know how cold Connor could get. He guesses that’s what happens when you live in Edmonton for nine months of the year. 

“We should break up.”

They’re out on the lake. Dylan is mostly dozing. Connor is reading a book about— Dylan’s not sure. About finding inner peace and being the best you that you can be, probably. Connor’s like that.

Dylan feels like he fell into the water. 

“Do you want to break up?”

Silence. Connor turns a page, and then dog ears a corner, closes his book. He flips up his sunglasses. At least he does Dylan the fucking courtesy of looking him in the eyes while he dumps him. 

“Edmonton and Arizona are too far apart,” Connor says, careful. “It makes sense. I— it’s silly to have a relationship where we can only be together for four months and a handful of days between August and May.”

Dylan’s drowning. He fights for— air? Words? A reason not to punch Connor in the face?

“Fuck you,” he says, just as careful as Connor, picks himself up off the dock and leaves.

-

The actual break up happens over the phone. Dylan calls Mitch who calls Auston Matthews who tells Dylan the best place in Arizona to train during the offseason, he packs in half an hour, kisses his mom, and he’s on a plane that evening. 

_we have to talk about this_ , Connor had texted while Dylan was in the air. 

Dylan is an adult, and therefore instead of sending a hundred middle finger emojis, just sends back, _sounds like we have nothing to talk about_ before turning his phone off in the cab.

Connor calls him the next day.

“Are you going to ignore me forever?” he asks. 

“I picked up, didn’t I?”

Dylan’s feeling magnanimous. Arizona is warm and dry and a million miles away from Connor and Ontario and all the bullshit expectations that people have of him there. He went to a coffeeshop that morning wearing a Yotes hat and didn’t even get a flicker of recognition from the barista. It’s pretty great.

Connor sighs down the phone. Dylan can imagine the look on his face, all pinched and unhappy.

“Are you going to talk to me, though?”

“What do we need to talk about? You dumped me. That’s your choice. I’m not going to sit here and talk about my feelings with you. You lost that right when you broke up with me because, and let me check my notes on that, because Edmonton and Arizona are too far apart.”

He can hear Connor breathing into the phone, but not saying anything.

“If you wanted to break up with someone, pick a better goddamn reason next time,” Dylan says, and hangs up.

-

Dylan goes to a bar. There’s one in his neighbourhood where the bartender definitely knows who he is, but absolutely refuses to acknowledge that fact. Dylan tips fifty percent on a light beer and hides in the corner. He plays a few levels of the dumb phone game Brinksy got him hooked on and scowls into his bottle.

It takes twenty minutes before Brinksy’s texting him the all-clear.

To his credit, when Dylan gets home, Brinksy just hands him a plate of food and doesn’t ask questions or offer any comments on how Connor is. 

Dylan wishes he could have fallen in love with Brinksy. It would have been easier, probably.

-

Dylan makes it through the Edmonton game without seriously injuring himself, unfortunately. He takes exactly two faceoffs against Connor and wins them both. 

Small victories, etc.

They meet for dinner at this italian place in Dylan’s neighbourhood.

Connor looks— tired. He has a bruise on his cheekbone from an errant high stick. It blends in with the bruises under his eyes from not sleeping. 

“How are you?” he asks. Dylan considers. 

“I need more wine before I can answer that,” he says, and finishes his glass, waving at the hovering waiter for a refill. 

Connor gives him a half smile. Dylan only grits his teeth a little. Maybe he’s becoming immune to The Connor McDavid Experience. 

(Dylan: bad at break ups. Worse at lying to himself.)

-

Dinner is fine. 

As fine as dinner with the ex-love of your life can be, anyway.

Connor asks about Ryan and Matty, and Dylan tells him. He offers a story about how he’s considering getting a puppy. 

They both drink— a lot of wine. Whatever, they’re adults, neither of them have games tomorrow. All Dylan will have to do is ignore the judgy look on Brinksy’s face when he stumbles in later that night. It’s fine. 

“I missed this,” Connor says, when he’s putting his coat on. The restaurant has closed down around them, and they both left— a substantial tip to apologise. 

“I missed you,” Dylan says, and he means for it to be biting and passive aggressive, but it accidentally comes out— not that.

Connor at least gives him the courtesy of pretending he’s busy fussing with the buttons on his coat and didn’t hear him, which is the kindest thing he’s done since before they broke up. Dylan’s not putting any thought into that.

-

It’s pissing rain when they leave, and when Connor tries to get an Uber back to the team hotel, apparently there isn’t a single free driver in the entire neighbourhood. 

“You can wait at my place,” Dylan offers, before he can overthink it. 

“It’s okay,” Connor tries. “It’s not raining that hard, I’m sure there’ll be a car soon.”

“Davo,” Dylan says, and the muscle memory of that nickname kicks in, makes his face soften when Connor looks at him with those stupidly big blue-grey eyes. “It’s fine. I can survive you in my house for twenty minutes.”

-

Dylan is going to crawl out of his skin. 

Connor is standing in his living room, looking at the framed photos on his mantle. 

“I didn’t think you’d keep this one up,” he says, pointing at one of the two of them. They’re only kids, maybe not even seventeen. Dylan doesn’t remember the photo being taken, but he remembers the day, because it was summer in Lorne Park, and Connor was staying at his house for the weekend, and that night was when Dylan knew he was in love with Connor McDavid, acne and feet too big for him and floppy hair and all.

Dylan crosses the room to stand next to him. “It’s a good picture,” he says. 

“It’s not,” Connor says. “I like it, though.”

He reaches out to brush a fingertip over seventeen year old Dylan’s face.

“I don’t know what you ever saw in me,” Connor admits, and Dylan’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Me neither,” he lies, because he isn’t sure whether he’s had too much wine or not enough, but either way, he can’t have that conversation tonight. Not with Connor standing in his living room like this. 

Connor snorts. “You always did know how to keep me humble,” he says. 

“Do you want coffee?” Dylan asks, and the tension between them snaps like a shard of glass. 

Connor checks his phone. “My Uber is actively driving away from me,” he says. “I’d love coffee.”

-

Dylan has made a lot of bad decisions in his life. 

Accepting a dare about whether he could jump a fence on his bike when he was eight. Letting himself be friends with Mitch Marner and therefore inviting three AM phone calls about literally nothing into his life. Fucking— everything about Connor McDavid. 

This, though? This might be the worst. 

He doesn’t mean for it to happen. He isn’t sure whether that makes it better or worse. All he knows is that he’s in the kitchen poking at his Keurig, and then he can sense Connor behind him, and then— 

“Hey, Dyl?”

Dylan shouldn’t have turned around. He should have kept up the pretence of being fully focused on his coffee process. 

What he did, though, was straighten up, turn around, and let Connor’s hand land on his jaw as their lips meet for the first time in— well, since before that day on the dock. 

Dylan didn’t realise he still remembered this. Connor tastes like the wine they drank and a little like rainwater. He feels like home. His thumb is nudged into the hinge of Dylan’s jaw, long fingers curled around the back of his neck. 

Fuck. 

_Fuck_.

Dylan has to break this kiss. He has to pull away. 

Instead, he loops his fingers into Connor’s belt and pulls him closer. 

-

Connor’s Uber arrives as he’s sucking a hickey into Dylan’s collarbone, low enough to hide under his shirt.

He leaves as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving Dylan in his kitchen, out of breath and stone cold sober. 

-

He wakes up the next morning to a text from a number he deleted from his phone, but never forgot.

_ im sorry. i shouldnt have done what i did last night _

_no,_ he texts back. _you shouldnt have_. He hits send and then starts typing again. _i_ _ m glad you did. _

_we cant get back together_ , Connor sends while Dylan’s in the shower. 

_i dont want to_ , Dylan says. _no offence davo but you were a shitty boyfriend_

_ can we be friends again? _

_ depends. are you going to keep kissing me every time we hang out? _

_i cant promise either way_ , Connor admits. _dealbreaker?_

_not necessarily,_ Dylan says. _you owe me a real fucking apology, though._


End file.
